The Devon Avon is becoming increasingly popular for outdoor or ‘wild’ swimming but many swimmers seem oblivious to the dangers posed by their poor visibility to power boat owners, in particular. If you are wearing a dark wet suit, you will be almost invisible to boat users down at water level, especially if the water is choppy.

Please consider your personal safety when swimming in open water that is used for other recreational activities. Although organised events such as the Bantham ‘Swoosh’ are well supervised from a safety viewpoint and wild swimming websites generally offer extensive personal safety advice (see, for example, http://www.wildswimming.co.uk/health-safety/ ) they make surprisingly little mention of the need to make yourself visible by wearing brightly coloured headgear, for example.

Swimmers personal safety is their own responsibility but boat owners should be constantly on the look-out.

Due to the severe weather there may be some disruption to our refuse and recycling collections today, we are asking residents to please leave your refuse or recycling out as usual and we will endeavour to collect it if it safe to do so.

If we are unable to collect it, we will do our best to collect any missed refuse or recycling before the end of the working week. However if we do not manage this we will run an extra collection service on Saturday. At this stage, we do not expect any collections between Tuesday and Friday to be disrupted.

Thank you for your co-operation. Our web site and social media will be updated regularly local information.

As you may know, I was asked by our Chairman to continue to maintain the relationship with our landlord since the Bantham Estate was purchased by Nicholas Johnston. Stephen and I have been steadily working toward replacing the highly restrictive lease that would otherwise remain in place until 2030 and includes some very challenging financial obligations.

We are delighted to advise you that Nicholas Johnston has agreed to the basic principles of a joint long term strategy that will help secure the future of our Club. I have explained some key elements below and ask you to please share these as widely as possible to ensure all members and especially potential members understand this positive development.

1) Nicholas Johnston continues to express his great appreciation that our Golf Club is an important part of his Estate. He has again confirmed that he has no desire to use the course for any other reasons. He specifically has no intention to use the course to extend the pheasant shoot, or for building purposes or any activity that would interfere with golf in any way. His ambition is for the Club to remain a prosperous Member owned and run asset, as we are now.

2) We are actively working with the Estate on the details of our joint strategy which includes an entirely new long term lease. We have a shared intention to complete this work over the next few months.

3) We have the Estates assurance that providing the strategy is successfully delivered, all outstanding deferred rent payments will be cancelled.

4) As an interim gesture of his commitment to the Club, Nicholas has also agreed to an additional reduction in our rent payments. This is a generous offer and underpins his support for the Club and the local community, and his ambition for Bigbury Golf Club to remain a vibrant business.

5) The Estate have agreed that a permanent Air Ambulance Landing Site will be created between the carpark and practice bunker. This again demonstrates the Estates view of our Club as an important community asset that they wish to support.

The financial generosity offered to the Club as part of the strategy will need to be balanced by the successful development of a limited and contained residential scheme on the Estate, but outside the Golf Course boundary. The Estate will be progressing this scheme over the next 12 months.

We will be releasing a press announcement jointly with the Estate, building on these key points.

In recent months many of us have been greatly troubled to hear of all sorts of ridiculous rumours circulating about the relationship between our landlord and the Club, none of which have been constructive. We hope that this very clear and positive statement will squash these rumours and demonstrate to all those interested that we continue to build a solid future. Please do your best to immediately correct any negative and unfounded discussion which can only damage our Club.

Here's a short video about the Bay View Cafe and the struggle to keep it – as the story stands now. Of course things are likely to change and we could just have a pile of rubble in a few months time if the developers get their way so object to the applications to demolish the cafe.